


(un)making

by minorthirds



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Jearmin Summer Splash 2015, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Non-Chronological, Prompt: Eleventh Hour, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:56:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4561914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minorthirds/pseuds/minorthirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hour zero to hour eleven.</p><p>the night before the expedition, Jean thinks back, and tries to figure out how they ended up here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(un)making

**Author's Note:**

> this piece is part of the Jearmin Splash 2015 - a team based writing competition  
> prompt: eleventh hour  
> team: canonverse  
> word count: 3162
> 
> i took a little bit of liberty with this prompt and addressed it both figuratively and literally; i figured it lent itself well to a series of snapshots, which is where the minimalist style comes from.  
> i hope it's still enjoyable, even if it's not lengthy.  
> please enjoy - and please consider voting for this entry in the comments at the end! thank you!!!
> 
> banner provided by [benriya-nic-kerdoodle](http://benriya-nic-kerdoodle.tumblr.com/)

* * *

_zero._

The cabin’s rafters are something for his eyes to get lost in – plank to plank, riveted together with bolts that look dirty, tarnished, yet sturdy and reliable, the stress of push and pull and age something they shoulder without complaint, as the breeze makes the wood creak sometime around midnight, stirring in the trees out the window.

Jean is the only one awake.

He is the mouse on the holiday, restless – he sits up, runs his hands through his hair and rubs at his temples, pleading for the ache to go away.

Connie is in the bunk to his left, all elbows and knees flung over his bedsheets, softly snoring, a kitten sound – if Jean were smart, he would be that way too, seeing as Lance Corporal Levi does his damnedest to make sure they’re up and going by dawn at the latest.

To his right, there’s a ridge of blanket; the moonlight courses down through the window and illuminates the folds, radiating outwards from Armin’s shoulder like rays of divinity.

The blond of his hair is bleached to bone where it falls against the sheets, and there’s a quality to it that sends a shiver down Jean’s spine – it’s a moment, captured in the wood of this cabin, that he would capture on canvas if he knew how, if his hands were devoid of callus, if they were for spreading paint rather than wrapping around the handles of swords, pressing maneuver gear triggers.

Jean thinks, then, about protection; he thinks of what he can do, and what he _couldn’t,_ and the turn of his shoulders tilts to guilt that he chooses to tuck under his covers, waiting patiently for half-remembered, restless dreams that have become his friends in the dark.

* * *

_one._

The Training Corps is circle eight of hell, he’s sure.

It’s three years of this, and he barely handles day one. Caught traitorously wishing with every bone and aching sinew of his body for bed back home, for something else, _anything_ else than this –

Military Police, yes, that’s the goal. And all he has to do is work hard for a few years and then he’s _there,_ and he can live his life in peace, not have to think about Shinganshina, whether Trost is next –

Jean rolls over on his stiff cot, looking for the backs of their heads in the dark, the kids from Shinganshina. The ones who had walked through Hell, circle nine, were passed over by Shadis because they’d already handled enough.

Jean sees _that asshole_ first, unkempt brown hair but his _stupid face_ and the rest of him buried under his blanket.

He keeps going until he sees a head of blond, the gold in his hair seeming to shimmer even in the dark, something lackluster and tarnished, in need of a little polish by someone who knows what they’re looking at and what they’re doing to see the value.

Jean had been resolute in pegging him as a wuss, but.

He’s no jeweler; he’s no artist, and maybe it’s something like cracking stones against the ground, prying them open like ground-eggs to find what’s grown within.

* * *

_two._

Trost changes everything.

It’s such a _fundamental_ change that he feels like the ground’s been moved a foot to the left under him, like he’ll trip and cut himself on his razor-sharp blades sooner than take a sturdy step.

His town is on fire and in ruin, and he feels a god on a day like this, a day that’s ceased being a _day_ and has become their static reality; the sky will always be this flat and dark, he thinks, and there will always, _always_ be Titans with yawning tombstone teeth and without gentle hands, even a shred of gentleness.

Who is he kidding?

There is no humanity to be found in a Titan.

Watching the way Armin breaks down he remembers why he is here, why he had chosen this in the first place – his dream’s in his grasp, yet yanked away by hands that take and take and.

Jean clenches his fists, glances at Marco.

Calm, stern-faced.

A rock in the storm.

* * *

_three._

He is cast adrift.

Smoke pulls away what he’d thought he’d wanted from life the way it pulls away from Marco’s bones, mixed in with so many others, and Jean’s lungs burn from the inhalation and desperation, when he declares his intent –

It’s years of hard work in the Corps wasted, giving up a shot at the cushy interior, and though he declares it to his friends, his _comrades_ stern through tears raking down his face, he spends the night tossing and turning and wondering if he’s right.

If _he_ is right, because what’s right for him isn’t necessarily what’s _right,_ because he’s not an idealistic idiot who thinks that he’s enough to _change_ anything, but –

Maybe he is wrong in doubting the value of a person, watching Eren in those days – watching Armin, who had broken there on the rooftop, broken and then put himself right back together again, not with putty to dull the cracks but _better than new._

The interior is still waiting for him, a beckoning hand, a unicorn on his back – but Jean thinks, listening to Connie and Armin and Annie talk softly beside him, it’s a betrayal.

He has come to care about his comrades. It’s a weakness and yet a strength all at once.

And when he hears Armin pledge himself to wings on his back and an early death, all weakness and nothing that’s direct use against the Titans – when he hears that, his fingers clench and his nails bite into his palms, and he thinks, _I’m not going to let the Titans ruin you, too._

Protection as bodily sacrifice, and maybe his life serves better thrown at the feet of a man-eating monster than it does wasting away, saving his own skin, at the cost of watching his friends return with cloaks as shrouds and freedom-wing breast patches cut free as trinkets.

They are just single lives – but damn it, they’re _real_ to him, and all of this is more real than it’s ever been, and. Someone has to take up the torch of Marco’s moral compass, and it’s a legacy he accepts with open hands.

* * *

_four._

He has underestimated him.

With blood coursing down his face and screaming nonsense things that chill Jean to the bone, he’s almost a terrifying kind of beautiful, forged through an iron furnace and polished to reveal the cunning, the intelligence his slight figure belies; when he acts on instinct to protect him, it’s something furiously urgent, like the fear of the Aberrant pulls his stomach out of him with a maneuver gear anchor, like he’s tripping and falling into a deep uncertainty.

It’s a feeling that leaves him still tumbling even with a fresh bandage ‘round Armin’s forehead, blue eyes bright in the sun that peeks through the clouds, and there’s no triggers and no gas to save him from this, the way his feet feel unsteady beneath him though the ground doesn’t truly shift beneath a Titan’s lumbering steps.

* * *

_five._

He knows now what that falling feeling was and is, as he pauses with a forkful of mashed potato lingering just at his bottom lip; the tines of his fork rest there in dry creases, the melted butter soaking in, as he watches Armin and Eren harass each other at their quaint little table.

It’s dinner with their family, or what’s left of it, and in the months they have truly become such – a family that’s lost and gained and lost a little more along the way, like leaves falling off a tree and littering across the forest floor, the one they crunch along once, gathering logs for the cabin fire.

Armin catches his eye then and pauses, mid-snatching a stalk of broccoli from Eren’s plate, still laughing. His eyes are bright with mirth – but when they catch Jean’s, that free laughter softens into something like a secret smile, a happy, warm flush dusting his cheeks.

He is a flower furling open, and Jean’s seen it all the way, and he wants to touch those petals and smell the fragrance, he thinks suddenly.

His mashed potatoes burn his tongue and he nearly bites the tender tip of it, looking away then before any around him can care to notice; the wooden fork nearly leaves splinters in his mouth in his haste, but it’s a dull sensation that pales to the way his cheeks and fingers numb and tingle all at once.

* * *

_six._

Jean thinks, later, that maybe he was coerced into this.

The chore, at least – he _distinctly_ remembers Armin relaying orders from Levi such that _he_ was in charge of replenishing their firewood stock. Yet when it comes time for him to venture out into the sunset woods, a hatchet unwieldy in his hand (his fingers tripping over the spots where triggers would be, even now), Armin is following close behind, the leaves crunching under his toes.

He doesn’t answer when Jean asks, merely hefts a hatchet of his own, and he catches himself thinking _you can’t possibly swing that well_ until he remembers the other day, catching Armin changing, eyes sliding over the corded muscles of his arms and back that hide itself under his clothes, leaving none the wiser.

Jean turns away, the flush on his neck tucked behind his collar like words under his tongue, and he pretends he doesn’t think about the way the ridges of Armin’s skin would feel under his palms.

Chopping wood is a way to relieve the heat that runs under his skin, the chill air ghosting along his sweat-streaked forehead and arms; he’s taken the liberty of rolling his shirtsleeves up, no jacket to worry about for now (that’s what happens when you hide in the mountains, at least), so when he casts his forearm against his forehead it’s all bare skin against bare skin, and he’s blinking the sweat out of his eyes when he peers at Armin.

He, too, is sweat-slicked and elbows-bared, chewing on the corner of his mouth carefully between swings – and when he drops the hatchet blade into the wood once more, the sharp wedge splitting a segment of log in twine, he looks up, catches Jean looking with a heave of his chest.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

* * *

_seven._

There’s not much talking involved.

Armin’s breath hasn’t slowed before his fingers glide along the nape of Jean’s neck, and Jean thinks, were he one of _them,_ like Eren, like Ymir, like – (he chokes on those names like a gulp of bitter tea) – he would shiver at the gesture, a reminder of weakness, a subtle threat.

But he isn’t. Yet he shivers anyway, the pads disappearing into the fringe of his undercut, and he stoops just as Armin leans up, and.

It’s nowhere as neat as all that, and their noses smash together at first until Jean masters the art of the tilt, Armin’s lips warm and chapped against his, and there’s a burning fervor something like the funeral pyre that kindles to life in his stomach.

Jean thinks the word for it is _desperate._

“I have this feeling,” Armin is muttering as if it’s the middle of a sentence when they pull apart for air, and he’s whispering against the corner of Jean’s mouth like it’s a secret he means to lose. “And it’s just – it’s _foreboding,_ and I wanted to be honest with you now, in case something –“

 _In case something happens,_ Jean wants to finish for him. It’s a feeling and a foreboding he knows well, his bedmate in the middle of the night when he watches the moonlight fall across Armin’s sheets and thinks _do I want to die without saying these words?_

But, he discovers, it’s nothing to _say._ It’s nothing to confess, especially not when Armin pulls him down with a force that’s dizzying.

Because whatever he had to say, Armin’s been waiting to say himself, and he speaks the words for both of them between collisions (because that’s it, that’s the only word, at the corner of _desperation_ and _foreboding_ , because they can both sense it, the change on the wind, and this idyllic lie can’t last them forever) – words like _“thank you”, “be safe”,_ and _months, it’s been months_ –

they’re not the words their kisses bleed, though, not the words when Armin bites down on Jean’s lip in an accidental misalignment of their teeth and not the words when he kisses the blood away.

Those are words they don’t dare touch.

* * *

_eight._

It changes everything between them, though it’s a silent agreement not to speak of it.

Connie mentions it once, looking between them, broom in hand.

“I’m not a _smart_ guy,” he starts by saying, “but even I can tell something’s weird with you guys. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Jean says firmly, reaching out for a gesture that would be a condescending hair ruffle were Connie to have hair of note; instead it comes out as a light, equally condescending pat, like Connie’s the annoying and nosy little brother he’s never had.

Jean shouldn’t lie. That’s what Connie _is_ to him – it’s been that way for years, since the first week of the Corps. They’ve all been family, for longer than he’s realized, which is why, even now, they’re each coping silently with that betrayal, that utter perversion of trust and three names burned off the tapestry.

But the rule of _family_ means they trespass. The rule of family makes this a betrayal, he thinks, and this – this family – is all he has, and it’s what he chose to give his life to.

So, he thinks, glancing to Armin, this must be truly the product of desperation. A sense of impending doom, that, from the tightness of his eyes even as he smiles at Connie, Jean is sure he feels too.

* * *

_nine._

When it’s him and Eren and Armin, then, he feels that change again.

It’s a different kind of change, though – they’ve all _grown,_ and were he to look back on himself back then, enlisting, he wouldn’t know who he was looking at.

Christa – _Historia_ comes to reprimand them for talking, and he matches stride with Armin, hefting boxes into his hands and cupping his fingers under the slats, feeling splinters poking at the pads.

It’s an easy companionship they have fallen into, and they don’t speak of that day, upwards of two months ago, when everything changed and yet nothing had at all.

Something born of desperation, a communication they resort to when they unmake themselves, tear themselves apart with the strain of living and the strain of imagining how they die.

(In Jean’s restless dreams, as he has for months, he continues to die.

In his restless dreams, it’s Armin trying to save him – or Armin ending him, a short mercy after the long suffering of wounds bleeding out on the grass, the long suffering of something like the half-life beyond a childhood taken too soon.

He’s glad these kids will get theirs.)

* * *

_ten._

Armin finds Jean in his cot, after dinner, holding his stomach and grumbling something about Levi’s fist in his gut.

“You deserved it,” he says softly, sinking into the not-soft mattress next to him, their thighs brushing. “You and Eren getting rowdy like that… it’s just like old times.”

“Guess so,” Jean admits.

But it’s hard to feel the nostalgia when the expedition looms before them – all he can think about is that Titan, the one Armin saved him from, last time. Annie, who had been prepared to smear all of them – him and Armin, at the very least – against the grass in a painter's bloody stroke, on her mission.

It’s been months and they still don’t know what that mission is.

All of it’s too much intrigue, and Jean doesn’t have the smarts for it, not really; watching Armin lost in thought, though, the candlelight against his golden hair haloing his soft features, Jean’s sure there are answers formulating in that head of his that he can’t even fathom.

He’d thought Armin weak once. He’d thought Armin a _wuss_ once, before he’d tripped and fallen headlong into – something.

No words for this. Or, words he doesn’t dare think, let alone speak.

“The expedition tomorrow.”

Jean stills at the sound of his words; even like that his heartbeat is stirred to racing, the sleepless mouse startled by a noise in the dead of night, when he’s wrestling with his thoughts and tracing fingers over the holes in himself he doesn’t know how to fix.

“Yeah,” Jean agrees, looking down at their touching thighs. “Number fifty-eight.”

“Jean,” Armin says suddenly, reaching for his hand, cupping it between his palms like he’s absolving sins etched in his flesh. “Let’s – let’s go for a walk.”

There’s a restlessness in his bones that finds kindred with Armin’s tugging, and he’s agreeing, even before he knows how it will look, before he can guess as to how it will end; there’s a plucking at the strings of his instrument, and Armin’s always been something beyond him, a work of art, a musician of thought.

Jean recognizes the feeling that’s being played out of him – the desperate yearning – and he thinks, _no, I can’t say no to this._

Death looms on their horizon like the red setting sun, and he’s weak to this. He’s always been weak to this, and it’s something he’s picked for himself, charmed by the tune thumbed out on the lyre.

* * *

_eleven._

It’s an hour before midnight and they’ve ended up in a storage closet somewhere.

Jean doesn’t care to fathom how, nor to piece it together on a map, when Armin’s mouth cups the front of his neck, sucking on a bruise that will _definitely_ show over his collar in the morning.

When he hisses, Armin pulls back with a jerk, blinking harshly though Jean can barely see his face in the dim room. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “Should we just –“

Jean laces his fingers through Armin’s hair, then, and thinks to himself that Armin could be a rich weaver’s muse. “Don’t you dare stop,” he finds himself muttering harshly, and it’s like this, a secret they hide in a cupboard with the handle of a hatchet digging into Jean’s back, that same death-fearing _desperation,_ or maybe a sense of—

—Maybe he’s got it wrong. Maybe it hasn’t been the fear of death; maybe it’s not the fear of what might come, but the fear of what might _not,_ that they use these looming fates as an excuse to act, an initiator, an incentive to come back _alive,_ to come back to this, something they’ve found.

Jean thinks, with his hands fumbling along Armin’s sides, tangling in his shirt, that this is the act of making through unmaking.

Or, perhaps, he’d been unmade all along, waiting to find a reason to put himself back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> pleeeeease consider voting for this fic in the comments below!
> 
> one more time:  
> prompt: eleventh hour  
> team: canonverse
> 
> on a scale of 1 to 10:
> 
> 1\. how in character was my fic?  
> 2\. How well did my fic handle the prompt?  
> 3\. overall enjoyment?
> 
> thanks so much for reading!!


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